War of Eagles (24 page)

She believed in doing things right.

Shek’s father died in a truck accident when the boy was twelve. Teaching had never been very profitable for his mother, and the widow’s pension from the military was extremely meager. Shek’s sideline became an important part of their income. He made increasingly sophisticated fireworks, flares, and even custom demolitions for local builders. Without the benefit of an education, Emperor Shek became a master of his craft. Best of all, there was no record of his skill in military or scholastic records. He was what the intelligence trade called an invisible.

When Chou Shin learned of this talented young man, he hired him for the 8341 Unit. Chou immediately set Shek and his mother up in a small but comfortable cottage in Yu Xian, a Beijing suburb. The structure was isolated and had a shed out back for Shek’s work, which was building bombs for the Central Security Regiment. The explosives were not simply for use by the CSR. Many of them were employed by the military for covert land and sea mines, illegal armaments that would not be traced to Beijing. Even more were given over for off-the-books ballistics. These were passed to rebels fighting in foreign lands, where destabilization benefited Beijing by involving enemy forces in distracting struggles at home.

Shek was always busy, though he was never rushed. His employer recognized that he was an artist who could hide explosives inside donuts for transport or bake them into ceramic goods that would explode spectacularly in a microwave oven or conventional oven. Those were good for assassinations.

Director Chou—who never made his requests by phone or computer but always visited the laboratory personally—had commissioned Shek to make very specific bombs over the last week. He wanted something small and powerful that could blow out the hull of a thirty-thousand-ton freighter. He wanted something else that would detonate cold: destroy a room on top of a high-rise structure without setting a fire or causing collateral devastation below. That required a briefcase-sized device with interior deflectors, steel ribs, and titanium mesh that would release the explosion without scattering superheated debris. Shek never knew where these devices were headed, nor did he care. Chou took care of him and his aging mother. Like his father, Chou was a military man and a loyal Communist. That was all Shek had to know.

A few days ago, however, Shek received a visit from someone else. Another military man who had learned of his work for Chou and needed a secret device of his own. He asked if an explosive could be prepared that would endure heat reaching 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit without detonating. Shek told him the real problem was not detonation but evaporation. At that temperature the medium carrying the chemicals would vaporize, causing the explosive to malfunction. Shek said it would be possible if the package were encased in a low-density, high-purity silica 99.8-percent amorphous fiber similar to the material used in the thermal tiles of the American space shuttle. Shek said he had something similar to that in his equipment closet. By that time Shek had guessed that the explosive would be used on a rocket, probably a ballistic missile, and foresaw a more difficult problem.

“The charge itself can be small, but the added weight of thermal shielding will immediately cause a missile or rocket to shift course,” Shek told him. “Even some of the larger fireworks I built had no tolerance for imbalance.”

“Added weight will not matter,” the individual said, smiling broadly and showing a gold tooth.

“But sir, it will cause the rocket to veer.”

“Mr. Shek, I want you to create the device. How long will it take?”

“Ten hours, maybe a little longer.”

“Good. I will return then. You will be generously rewarded.”

Shek did not care abut that. He did not mind killing people here and there, anonymously. They were enemies of the state or they would not be targets. But ever since he began making fireworks, Shek had been a student and devotee of space flight. He did not know what kind of rocket the man wanted to destroy, or why. But he did not want to be a part of it, whatever nations were involved.

“You will do it,” the visitor replied coldly. “If you refuse, your mother will be brought here and shot in front of you. In the legs first. Then the arms.”

Shek began assembling the man’s bomb. He finished it on time. He did not ask what it was for. He did not want to know.

Now, however, he was watching television while he worked on a design to inject fuel into a lightbulb so it would explode when it was turned on. He saw a television newscast about the next launch from Xichang. It would take place the following afternoon, on National Day. A Long March 4 rocket would be used to carry a communications satellite aloft. Shek used his low-level security password to look up the project on-line. He read that the manufacturer was the Unexus Corporation and that the power source was plutonium.

Shek felt sudden nausea unrelated to the gas fumes. At a height of seven miles, as originally proposed, the destruction of the satellite would have caused the resultant radiation to remain primarily in the upper atmosphere. There, air currents would have diluted the effect and disbursed it over a wide area. An explosion under three miles would cause extensive fallout, much of that directed downward by the blast.

What this man planned was worse.

Far, far worse.

The commander in chief of the Taiwan Armed Forces, based at General Staff Headquarters, Ministry of Defense, in Taipei, sat in a conference room. With him were the commanders of each of the services. Except for short rest periods, the six men would be in this room for at least the next twenty-four hours.

Exactly one day before any rocket launch on mainland China, the 427th Taiwan Flight Wing, based at Ching Chuan Kang Air Base, went on alert. The nationalist Chinese did not expect an attack, and the planes did not leave the field. But the pilots all went to the ready room, and the radar was put on double data status. This meant that the sophisticated new American-built strong-net radar systems at Ching Chuan Kang were interlocked with the systems at Pingtung Air Base North, home of the 439th TFW. That gave the military overlapping pictures of the mainland coast. Instead of receiving a blip with each sweep of one system, incoming images were constant. The double data system left holes in Taiwan’s northern coast, but high command was not overly concerned. If an attack came from North Korea, Seoul would let them know.

Not that the Taiwanese high command expected an attack. Rocket and missile tests by the People’s Republic of China were more an opportunity for a drill than an anticipation of hostilities. It was a chance for the Taiwanese Armed Forces to show their across-the-strait military adversaries that they were watching.

And ready. Twelve hours after the radar scan had begun, Taiwanese Fleet Command would dispatch one cruiser each from the four major naval facilities at Kenting, Suao, Makung, and Keelung. Two recently commissioned dieselpowered submarines would be launched from the new mountain stronghold in Hengchung on the southern coast. Six hours after that, in Tsoying, the Taiwanese Marine Corps would prepare for deployment by sea and air. On the books, their mission would be to recover anything that might land in Taiwan’s territorial waters. But each man knew that in the event of a real crisis, their target could be anything from the vanguard of the PRC fleet to a coastal base or industrial complex.

In all, just six vessels and under three thousand men would be activated in this initial phase of national defense. If the TAF subsequently identified an actual threat from the PRC, the military would move from EWI—the early warning and information phase—to an aggressive electronic warfare phase. This would constitute a massive blocking of mainland communications and reconnaissance systems. Concurrently, Taiwan would launch its forces in a strategic counterblockade capacity to ensure that the waterways and air lanes would be kept free for the TAF and its allies. Antiballistic armament would be launched to intercept any missiles fired from the mainland coast. One hundred fifty F-16 fighters were the cornerstone to this capability. The American-made jets were faster and more powerful than the sixty French Mirage 2000-5 jets that formed the backbone of the PLAAF.

This information and counterattack superiority would form the basis of the initial Taiwanese thrust. It would be followed by a fully synchronized, multiservice and extremely quick response to any sea or land assault, or even the hint of one. There was no doubt in Taiwan that an initial thrust from the PRC could be met and stopped. Their entire strategy depended upon decisively repelling a first strike and holding a second wave. If a struggle went beyond that, and the United States did not intervene, the PRC would simply overwhelm them.

No one expected it to come to that. War benefited neither nation. Taiwan and the PRC did a great deal of business with one another. Not just black market activities but legitimate investments and industrial development. And those numbers were increasing exponentially. The only ones who objected to that were the vintage Communists and the military hard-liners. Both groups were losing ground to the young entrepreneurs. Ironically, these young men and women were a product of a successful Communist policy: the decades-old one-child-per-family rule. Family planning prevented an estimated three hundred million births, which would have taxed the infrastructure and kept Chinese mothers out of the workforce. But it also created a generation of pampered, entitled Chinese. These young adults wanted what their Taiwanese counterparts had: brand-name clothes, electronic toys, and high-end automobiles. Neither Communism nor militarism was going to give them that.

Nonetheless, the commander in chief and his staff still put the Taiwanese military through its carefully planned defensive motions. There was always the chance that someone in Beijing would think the future looked better draped in red instead of silver and gold. Reason and greed were powerful motivators. Unfortunately, so were habit and vanity. That combination could be catastrophic, especially if a political or martial cause to which someone had dedicated their life was in danger of being extinguished.

Being a guest in China was a little like making a soufflé. If you opened the door at the wrong time, the result wouldn’t be a happy one.

Unlike their counterparts in Washington, dignitaries in China did not arrive fashionably late for a party. Not only was it considered extremely bad manners, it assured the latecomer that he or she would be ignored. The Chinese were very good at turning away from or looking through someone who was ungracious.

Arriving early was also considered discourteous, an imposition on the host’s charity. The result, of course, was an inevitable bottleneck at the door. But there was a benefit to that as well. People were obliged to meet and chat with whomever was standing around them under the long, long canopy that led to the street. The canopy was only erected for receptions. It was a gesture so guests would not feel as though they were waiting outside, exposed to elements and passersby. That would have been considered bad manners.

In Hood’s case, he ended up chatting with two people he did not know. A third individual was one he did recognize, a Chinese national who worked for the Beijing bureau of the
Washington Post
. Hood did not want to talk to him. The man did not recognize Hood, and he wanted to keep it that way. A good reporter would not simply accept, “I happened to be in Beijing, and the ambassador invited me,” as a reason for being here.

Presenting his back to the reporter left Hood facing the Brazilian ambassador and his wife. They looked to be in their sixties. The woman was wearing a small diamond engagement ring, which suggested that she was the original Mrs. Ambassador. The man was a former architect who was admiring the Huabiao, an ornamental marble pillar engraved with twining dragons and ominous clouds. He said that the origin of the Huabiao dated to the legendary kings Yao and Shun, who ruled some 4,000 years ago. He said that they were originally wooden columns used as landmarks for travelers.

His wife smiled benignly. She was a historian, a professor at Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro. The handsome, gray-haired woman was on sabbatical to be with her husband during his tenure.

“The Biaos were not that,” she said, addressing Hood. “They evolved from a pole called a
Biao
, which was used in building much more recently, around 700 B.C. The Biao was placed in the ground to determine plumb and to mark the boundaries of construction. As larger structures came to be built, stone Biaos were used. By 400 B.C., they had become part of the structure.”

“While we are here, we are collecting data to ascertain which of us is right,” the ambassador said with a smile for his wife. He added pragmatically, “Whichever of us wins or loses, scholarship benefits.”

Hood smiled. There was something sweet about their rivalry. The couple had found an activity that allowed them to be together yet still individual. He envied them that.

They made it through the door and into the ballroom after nearly ten minutes. Their names were checked against a master list by men wearing formal black Chinese military uniforms. Though Hood and most of the guests were dressed formally, the Chinese made no attempt to evoke the dynasties or Western styles. This was a show of traditional Red Chinese influence and authority. Inside, the Chinese leaders were dressed in tuxedos with necks reminiscent of the high-collared Mao jacket.

The American ambassador was already working on a martini as he chatted with the prime minister through a young female interpreter. Hood felt a flash of anger, not because the man had Le Kwan Po’s ear but because Hasen did not have to wait in line. The feeling passed when the ambassador saw Hood and waved him over. Simultaneously, Hasen excused himself and walked toward Hood. He was glad to see that. Hood did not know who he was supposed to be or why he was here. That was something he was to have discussed with the ambassador before coming. He knew only that he was posing as an observer attached to the embassy.